Thursday, 8 June 2017

West Kent's GE Literature Pack

A lot of candidates, agents and activists have complimented our West Kent organisation, in particular how fast we were "out of the stalls" and the volume of local literature we produced, the first piece landing on the doormats the day after the County Council campaign finished on Friday 5 May. I have written before that other peoples' election leaflets are like baby photographs, only of interest to those whose name they bear, but for the record here is what we have thus far produced. In total, we will be producing 11 separate items of literature for our seven candidates, so between us and our print and design team, by polling day we will have designed , printed and mail merged 77 different leaflets totaling 1.38 million pieces of paper!For the record, here is what we have so far put out. I am only publishing literature which has already landed on the doormats for obvious reasons, but I will add new items as and when they go live. Regardless of which example I use in this blogpost, each of our seven candidates (Greg Clark, Tom Tugendhat, Tracey Crouch, Helen Grant, Adam Holloway, Helen Whately and Craig Mackinlay) have had the same support. VOTE TODAY CARDThe very final piece of literature produced for our local West Kent candidates was this handy A6 "pledge card", delivered (knock and drop) to known pledges this morning. Lots went into windows during the day, boosting spirits and and showing support.

GET OUT THE VOTE POSTCARDS (GOTV)The penultimate piece of West Kent literature landing on the doormats next week are A5 personalised pledge cards. These are going to C P K Q T M voters plus certain targeted MOSAIC groups. These cards are overprinted with the elector's name and address, polling station and roll number. On the reverse is a small window or car poster.

Election Address 4 (EA4)The fourth and final piece of Royal Mail Election Freepost started landing on doormats today. This is EA4 and is being delivered to the second named person in each household, unless the second named person is either 18-25 (in which case the would have received EA2, the younger voters leaflet) or 60+ (in which case they would have received EA3). In these cases, EA4 would have been sent to the 3rd or 4th named person instead. Approximately 20,000 voters per constituency will receive EA4. This leaflet is A4 folded to A5 but landscape rather than portrait.

Followers of this running blog may have noticed that all four pieces of Royal Mail Election Post are very deliberately a different shape, size and design. The reason for this being we did not want any voter thinking we had delivered the same leaflet twice. As with all West Kent literature, the content is 100% local (provided by the candidate), the leaflet was designed by me, printed and mail merged locally in Kent using our local print partners.

Election Address 2 (EA2) and Election Address 3 (EA3)EA2 and EA3 started landing on doormats across the seven constituencies where I am Agent this morning (Sat 20th May). It was planned for these to go out together as they are targeted at very different audiences.EA2 is 4pp 148mm square: this was sent to approximately 8,000 younger voters (18 - 25yo) in each constituency. The sample below is Greg Clark's but all seven candidates in the "group" had their own version with 100% locally produced copy.

EA3 is A4 folded to A5: this has been sent to voters aged 60 and above (excluding those who received EA1 as "first in household"). EA3 has been sent to around 12,000 voters in each constituency. For those curious how who identified this data, we have developed our own macro which not only splits each household into "first on register" "second on register" and so on, but then re-runs the data and again separates into different tabs those voters we wish to target based on date of birth range. This is Helen Whately's EA3, but once again the leaflet was available to all local candidates with 100% local content.

Get Out The Postal Vote Card (GOTPV) with postal votes landing on doormats in just three days time, our teams are now focused on delivering a personal GOTPV postcard to over 70,000 postal voters in West Kent. This is Greg Clak's example.

Election Address 1 (EA1) which started landing on the doormats via Royal Mail Election Sort today. This went to the first named elector in every property. Like all West Kent literature, it was designed by me and our graphic designer, Caroline Spenceley, printed by DA Printers in Rochester. The "finishing" (ie, mail merging, folding and packing to Royal Mail requirements) was done by another local business TMB Mailing in Plaxtol. It is A4 folded to DL.

First 72 Hour Leaflet (F72): as soon as the Kent County Council campaign finished on Thursday 4 May, our teams transferred smoothly to the Parliamentary campaign, hand-delivering 20,000 - 30,000 F72 leaflets between Friday 5 May and Sunday 7 May. Most Associations had teams at the local railway stations at 6.30am on Friday 5th to meet and greet commuters along with street stalls in all the major town and village centres on Saturday 6th May.

Calling Card: We deliberately don't use the traditional "sorry you were out when we called" wording as I like candidates and their teams to hand these out "far and wide" when canvassing, something harder to do if they say "sorry you were out." These cards can also be used to hand-out at street stalls and railway stations if stocks of other generic leaflets run low.

Letterhead: In previous elections we had supplies of letterheads printed, which either ran out necessitating a reprint, or there were boxes left after the event. This year, having now bought a high quality full colour printer, I simply asked our designer for a high-res pdf from which we print letterheads as needed.

Window posters and correx boards: again, I have our posters and boards produced locally. DA printers do our A3 and A4 window posters and our correx boards are done to exactly the same design by another local company, Scarbutts Ltd in West Malling.